The successor to Windows Vista now has a name: Windows 7.
Although the new operating system is not due to hit store shelves until late next year, Microsoft felt that now was the time not only to unveil the name of the next version of the world’s most-used operating system but, more importantly, the rationale for the abandonment of the “aspirational” naming scheme of recent versions of Windows.
In essence, Microsoft has admitted through various sources that users have come to view Vista as too complicated and too obnoxious. Specifically, Microsoft has taken a lot of heat over Vista’s User Account Control, which relentlessly prompts users with permission dialog boxes — for everything from installing new applications to accessing certain parts of the operating system itself.
Combine that annoyance with the significant computing power needed to make Vista operate as smoothly as Windows XP, and you have a user base that’s been loudly complaining about the direction that Windows has taken. Hence Microsoft’s indication, with the Windows 7 name, that the company is listening — and planning to offer a less intrusive, more streamlined Windows.
But if you use Vista now, you don’t need to wait over a year to get a Vista-like version of Windows that’s leaner, less obnoxious, and indeed even snappier. There are steps you can take whip Vista into shape right now. What you end up with won’t exactly be Windows 7, but it will be a whole lot more livable than the Vista you use now.
TAME USER ACCOUNT CONTROL
UAC is the feature of Vista that users love to hate, and with good reason. It’s responsible for those dialog boxes that read “An unidentified program wants to access your computer” any time that you try to open a file or run a program that could install itself or change files on your computer. The trouble is that 95 percent of the time, you know exactly what you’re doing when this dialog box pops up, and therefore it amounts to just another annoyance on your way to getting something done.
It’s possible to disable UAC altogether, but if you do, you’ll be removing an important security component from Vista, leaving yourself more vulnerable. Instead, you could turn to a new, free tool from Symantec called Norton UAC Tool (www.nortonlabs.com/inthelab/uac.php), which gives you more control over what types of actions UAC prompts you about.
The Norton UAC Tool adds some important options to the standard UAC dialog box. For example, after installing Norton UAC, if you double-click an “exe” file to install a program, UAC will prompt you as usual, but you’ll also have the option to disable that type of prompt in the future by clicking a “Don’t ask me again” check box.
Norton UAC also provides more information than the standard UCA about what’s about to happen as a result of an action you just took. For instance, a UAC prompt that opens after you click some Control Panel applets lets you know that actions you perform might make changes to a protected directory. Again, the Norton UAC offers you the option to disable such prompts in the future.
TONE DOWN AERO
Aero — the Vista interface feature that enables semi-transparent windows — is pretty, but it’s also a major resource hog. It’s so demanding, in fact, that the edition of Vista called Windows Vista Basic, which is designed to run on less powerful machines, doesn’t even include it.
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